Vegan Fitness
7 Priciples for the Perfect Workout

When it comes to the strength training component of your vegan fitness program I want to know:

Are Your Workouts Worthless?

They may be if you don't know and practice these seven principles.

Principle 1-Momentary Muscle Fatigue

This is also known as going to failure. Many people are moving away from that phrase though because is sounds negative. But to get results you need to fail. Your goal for every set you do is reaching a point where your muscles are fatigued enough that you can’t complete another repetition without breaking proper form. That is failure and it guarantees your success.

Proper form is important to insure your safety and for you to get the results you want.

Principle 2-Quality

Just like organic vs. conventional food, quality is more important than quantity in your vegan fitness program. Quality keeps you safe. When you are doing any exercise you want to pay attention to form. Form is how your body is situated while you exercise. Your spine should stay in perfect alignment from your tail bone to the top of your head.

When you start to break form because of fatigue or too much weight it is time to stop the exercise. Focus on quality of movement. Make every repetition look beautiful.

Principle 3-Go Slow

As Simon and Garfunkel said, “Slow down, you move to fast. You’ve got to make the moment last.” Muscles respond to the amount of time you have them under tension.

If you do a really fast repetition your muscle isn’t under tension for very long. When you go slow you maximize the amount of time your muscle is being worked.

Principle 4-Mind + Muscle = Results

What are you thinking about while you workout? Ideally you should be visualizing the muscles you are working. Not only does this improve your coordination it will improve your results. It also turns strength training into a mind-body exercise—moving meditation. Breathing out I contract my abs and sit up, breathing in I slowly return to the floor. Mindful vegan fitness-Brilliant!

Principle 5-Breathe!

It turns out oxygen is fairly important-you can’t live without it you know. You need to breathe in and out. Not just in. No holding your breath. That is the most common error people make while doing strength training. Holding your breath will fatigue you faster. That means your workouts won't give you the results you want. Generally it is a good idea to breathe out when you are exerting yourself. Whatever you do, breath in and out. Keep that breath flowing for the best results.

Principle 6-Rest

You need at least one day of rest between strength training workouts. This is because the way strength training makes you stronger is by creating micro tears in your muscles.

Your body doesn’t like to be injured so when it heals these tears it makes your muscles stronger than they were before your workout. You body repairs itself best during rest your rest day. To make your workouts really effective you need to rest.

Principle 7-Progression

To avoid plateaus you need to consistently progress your workout. This means when you are able to, for example, do 15 push-ups easily, it is time to try for 20.

Use your time effectively-follow these seven principles and make every workout worth your while.

Go to Do you know how vegan fitness will make you skinny and strong for life?